1. Technical Field
This invention generally relates to the data processing field, and more specifically relates to the gathering and monitoring of performance data in computer systems.
2. Background Art
Since the dawn of the computer age, computer systems have evolved into extremely sophisticated devices, and computer systems may be found in many different settings. Computer systems typically include a combination of hardware, such as semiconductors and circuit boards, and software, also known as computer programs. As advances in semiconductor processing and computer architecture push the performance of the computer hardware higher, more sophisticated computer software has evolved to take advantage of the higher performance of the hardware, resulting in computer systems today that are much more powerful than just a few years ago.
Computer systems typically include operating system software that controls the basic function of the computer, and one or more software application programs that run under the control of the operating system to perform desired tasks. For example, a typical IBM Personal Computer may run the OS/2 operating system, and under the control of the OS/2 operating system, a user may execute an application program, such as a word processor.
The performance of a computer system depends on many factors that are determined by hardware, software, and other dynamic considerations such as total number of programs being processed, network traffic load, cache efficiency, etc. The performance of computer systems is of great interest to customers that purchase and depend on these computer systems. In addition, the performance of these computer systems is also of interest to the computer system vendor to determine whether the performance could be improved by selling additional hardware, software, or services to the customer to better meet the customer's needs.
Current operating systems collect performance data as a computer runs. Some operating systems provide unrestricted customer access to performance data, allowing the customer to view the performance data historically for a defined period, such as the past six months. Providing the customer with unrestricted access to the performance data for the customer's computer systems may result in a loss of marketing opportunity for the computer system vendor. For example, if the performance data indicates that disk utilization is high, the customer may purchase a new disk drive from a different vendor rather than from the vendor that sold the customer the computer system. In addition, unrestricted access by the customer to the performance data without fee eliminates an opportunity to sell reports and analysis services to the customers. Without a way to strike a balance between the customer's need to analyze performance data and the vendor's need to collect the performance data from the customer, the needs of both vendors and customers will continue to be unsatisfied.